Sunrise on the Reaping: Review Survey

There are reviews of books and then there are deep dive explorations of what makes a book work, what caused its failure, and of the artistry and meaning involved.

The reviews are on the street within days, sometimes hours of publication — by necessity revealing much more about the reviewer than the text, play, opera, or movie in question. There are exceptions to this “Don’t Judge a Book By What is Written by Someone Who Has Only Read It Once and Very Quickly,” but those are from truly exceptional reviewers (and perhaps as dreadful novels).

Having said that, while Elizabeth Baird-Hardy and I do our re-reading and charting, etc. of Sunrise, here are the top three reviews that showed up on my quick search for same in my internet browser:

The New York Times loved it and offered this day of publication endorsement: A Propulsive, Brutal ‘Hunger Games’ Prequel Is Here. And It’s Great.

Collins has not lost her flair for the grisly, and there are some horrifying scenes once the tributes reach the arena — a verdant garden of earthly terrors. Once again, we find ourselves complicit in the grotesque voyeurism of watching a bunch of scared, exhausted children get executed in increasingly brutal ways; a death by genetically modified squirrels is particularly haunting.

What saves Collins’s work from veering into torture porn is the ferocious humanity with which she imbues her characters. “Sunrise on the Reaping” features a vibrant cast, especially the other District 12 tributes — the precocious Louella, the pragmatic Wyatt and the surprisingly savvy Maysilee — and Collins draws out each character’s anguish and tenderness, their humor and stubborn hope, as they refuse to follow the Capitol’s script. This is the project of dystopian fiction: to shine a light in tyranny’s greasiest corners and show how people — ordinary, determined human beings — might take it apart.

Lauren Puckett-Pope at Elle online focuses on the topical, which is to say political messaging she thinks is the primary freight of The Hunger Games series as a whole and Sunrise, especially. From We Already Know How Sunrise on the Reaping Ends. That Doesn’t Change Its Impact:

Fifteen years after Mockingjay was released, I needn’t wonder why the series brought on refreshed nightmares. Authoritarianism is not a fictional threat. It has not been dreamed up for our entertainment or titillation. It is here and present and bloodthirsty. As with the entirety of The Hunger Games saga, Sunrise on the Reaping keeps this truth close to its heart, which is why—even for a book for “young readers”—its story is so difficult to absorb.

Yet Collins makes it clear that the war against injustice did not start or end with Katniss Everdeen. Before her was Haymitch Abernathy. Before him was Lucy Gray Baird, of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. She learned her political anthems from the Covey, who learned them from their ancestors of yore. Stories, passed down through generations—each of them sowed the seeds of revolution that are sparked during Haymitch’s Hunger Games and ignited during Katniss’s. Dystopian literature like Sunrise on the Reaping is not a manual for effective protest, nor a crystal ball predicting the future. It is fiction and should be treated as such. But it can serve an essential purpose, one that Collins has not lost sight of in her decades of Hunger Games books: Fiction keeps close what we might otherwise deign to forget. It reminds us of what we stand to lose. And, at its best, it stirs us to pick up the fight.

Liz Schumer at People magazine is also a fan of the second prequel and not as openly partisan as the Elle ‘blue Anon’ mouthpiece (or the NPR writer with TDS’ review). From Sunrise on the Reaping Review: Return to Panem for Haymitch Abernathy’s Quarter Quell:

The third [way to read a Hunger Games novel] is the way I couldn’t help but devour the book as an adult who also reads the news — as a commentary on the times we’re living in and as a rallying cry against the forces that would divide us. That’s the way I recommend adults read it, because there’s lots to be gleaned through that lens….

There’s enough time spent on the stark difference between what really happens in the arena and the heavily edited version shown to the Districts that’s awfully close to what we see on social media — and all media for that matter.

But what I really took from Sunrise on the Reaping is a reminder that Collins is awfully good at what she does — the sharp descriptions, the heart-pounding battles, the creative punishments and machinations in the Arena that make me wonder what goes on between her ears — and that readers of all ages would do well to take another trip to Panem. It’s a life-giving book, no matter what you think of the world we’re living in now. Because it reminds us that unity is worth something. In some cases, it’s worth everything. 

Our deep dives are in progress and will be posted here in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!